Christopher Tolkien, 1924–2020

Abstract

Christopher Tolkien, 1924–2020 Wayne G. Hammond (bio) and Christina Scull (bio) Christopher Tolkien, who died in Draguignan, France on January 16, 2020, at the age of ninety-five, had a profound effect on Tolkien studies greater than that of other scholars. Only through his devotion to his father's writings, an effort which spanned nearly five decades, do we know the remarkable extent of J.R.R. Tolkien's literary achievements beyond his most familiar works. Nearly half a century ago, published books by Tolkien did not fill a single shelf, and books about him were few. Of his Silmarillion mythology one could have only the barest idea, from tantalizingly brief mentions of it in Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings. It was not generally known that he had been inventing his "ancient legends" of Middle-earth since at least 1914, nor could we imagine the vast archive of papers he left at his death, containing works of whose existence there had not been a clue. Much might have been lost at his passing in 1973, and we would have been none the wiser, if Christopher Tolkien had not subordinated his own career as a scholar and spent the rest of his life in the service of his father's creations. Christopher Reuel Tolkien was born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, on November 21, 1924. His mother had hoped for a girl (following two boys, John and Michael), but his father took special delight in his third son. J.R.R. Tolkien was then the Professor of English Language at the University of Leeds. Christopher's forename was given him in honor of his father's old school friend, Christopher Wiseman. The initials "CJRT," written by Christopher on his published maps for The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and Unfinished Tales, include a confirmation name, John, which he did not always use. He was just a year old in January 1926 when his family moved from Leeds to Oxford, where his father had become the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the university. He was educated, like his brothers, first at the Dragon School, not far from his home in Northmoor Road, and later at the Oratory School in Caversham, Berkshire, a preparatory boarding school for Roman Catholics. Also like his siblings, he was brought up listening to the stories his father told them at bedtime or on occasions such as their "winter reads." Christopher engaged with these wholeheartedly, even precociously. In the letter Tolkien wrote to his children in 1929 in the guise of Father Christmas the five-year-old Christopher is praised specially for sending a card and letters (letters, notably, in the plural), and for his [End Page 7] learning to write; for the latter, he received a fountain pen and a special picture (Tolkien, Letters from Father Christmas, 66).1 More famously, according to an account by Michael Tolkien, Christopher at the age of four or five interrupted while his father was retelling (or continuing to tell) the story of The Hobbit: "Last time, you said Bilbo's front door was blue, and you said Thorin's hood was silver." At this, Tolkien muttered "Damn the boy" and went to his desk to make a note. Christopher himself kept no memory of the event, but did not deny that he might have been concerned, at that age, with such inconsistencies. In fact, it is a characteristic of bright children to regard fine distinctions in the telling of a story, and it anticipated Christopher's keen eye for detail shown much later in The History of Middle-earth. He was certainly concerned enough with The Hobbit to give it, two months after its publication, "a vigorous puff" in his 1937 letter to Father Christmas (Tolkien, The Hobbit [1987], vii). That Christmas of 1937 he returned from school feeling unwell, and was found to have irregularities of the heart. He spent most of 1938 lying in bed, in his room or in the garden where he could watch the skies through a telescope. He had a private tutor, so was not deprived of education. Although he seemed to improve enough to join his...